Comment by wholinator2
3 days ago
You seem very angry yourself, and willing to let that anger guide you to harming someone. Are you so different from that teacher? In fact, you might be worse, while he only gave a grade (one of many surely, likely to have no long term impact on life prospects or survival), you would have this man made homeless? Don't be so quick to assume a teacher (at least in the us) has been able to accrue sufficient savings to endure a ruined livelihood. Sounds very, very extreme to me. Might there be a more charitable interpretation of the words, might there be information that we don't have that would, say, humanize the human being you'd like to ruin? Maybe we could take the time to understand these impulses in ourselves and be the example we want rather than reflecting the pain we hate to ever increasing magnitudes.
I would. Small things like this add up to overall corruption.
Also im not killing him. Just firing him. Find a new job and don’t do shit like that again.
Side note: the parent's entire argument boils down to this:
"Look at how hurt the teacher would be by being fired, you are a bad person for suggesting that.
Setting aside the Ad-Hominems¹ like "Are you better than the teacher"?, this is a textbook example of the logical fallacy known as Appeal to Emotion².
Which is delightfully ironic given the numerous people accusing you of being overly emotional in the point you're making that a teacher who willfully breached trust and abused their authority over children shouldn't have such authority.
This says much more about the people criticizing you than they realize.
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¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion
>You seem very angry yourself
To whom? Not to me. Please don't try to assert you know what someone else is feeling.
What they wrote wasn't angry.
>and willing to let that anger guide you to harming someone.
It's not anger that's guiding the call to fire the teacher that willfully mis-grades a correct answer because "they got mad" at the student for understanding the material at above-average level.
It's the compassion for their students.
>Are you so different from that teacher?
Yes. The teacher is given authority over children, and we trust them to be fair and just in their job.
They have violated the trust and abused the authority.
And what got them mad was the student doing what we expect the students to do very well — they learned.
The teacher got mad at their student for learning, and abused the student in retaliation.
The retaliation affected someone who didn't have a choice about being in that position, and who was required to be in that class (by law, among other things), and the consequences of bad grades have lifelong effects.
Meanwhile, the commentor you're responding to observed that the teacher has failed our trust and abused the authority, and deemed such harm to students unacceptable to an extent that warrants revoking this person privilege to teach.
Nobody here has authority over the teacher, nobody trusts us to treat the teacher fairly; the teacher is free to work elsewhere; and we're being displeased about the teacher not merely doing his job badly, but harming his students.
To think these two situations are comparable is a failure of critical thinking, as well as empathy.
>In fact, you might be worse, while he only gave a grade (one of many surely, likely to have no long term impact on life prospects or survival), you would have this man made homeless?
Nobody said anything about making the teacher homeless.
His need of having a home doesn't grant him a right to hurt children.
If you're not happy about firing potentially leading to homelessness, you may advocate for things like housing guarantees, income guarantees, and so on.
The Soviet Union, where that was the case, had its merits after all. Saying this without sarcasm, as someone born in the USSR.
But you appear to be talking in bad faith here (or, at least, without thinking it through), because by your logic, one shouldn't say that anyone should be fired for doing a bad job, by equating firing to homelessness (something specific to the US, BTW).
People are called to be fired (and are fired) for much lesser offenses than willfully hurting children in retaliation.
Most US states are at-will employment states, where anyone can be fired for nearly any reason (the few exceptions are well known).
In light of that, your argument rings hollow.
>Don't be so quick to assume a teacher (at least in the us) has been able to accrue sufficient savings to endure a ruined livelihood.
As someone who's left academia, and has many friends teaching in college or high school: that teacher will likely be better off financially doing anything else anyway.
That said, the system where we pay shit to shitty teachers and justify harm to children by shit pay is shitty all around.
See, the real issue with your rhetoric is that you completely ignore what the teacher has done.
Which is, again, abusing the trust and authority over children (we trust grading to be fair, and a lot depends on it), willfully, in retaliation, for the student having learned a lot.
Whatever the offense was, though, your argument can be repeated verbatim, without any changes, and will be still consistent.
Replace mis-grading with sexual assault, and you can still ask all the same questions you did.
Think about that for a minute. Try it.
...Don't be so quick to assume a teacher (at least in the us) has been able to accrue sufficient savings to endure a ruined livelihood. Sounds very, very extreme to me....
>Might there be a more charitable interpretation of the words, might there be information that we don't have that would, say, humanize the human being you'd like to ruin?
Gee, I must've missed that line in the US Constitution where we're all guaranteed the right to pursuit of happiness, teaching high school classes, and harming students entrusted to our authority by willfully mis-grading them.
Unironically — wouldn't anyone please think of the children?
The teacher's potentially poor finances don't equate to having a right to abuse trust and authority over children.
He has abused that trust in a way that leaves very little hope for him changing his ways (if you think that teacher will ever be happy to see that his student learned more than the teacher knew, I have a bridge to sell to you).
Consequently, there's no reason to believe the teacher should continue having the privilege to have authority over children.
>Maybe we could take the time to understand these impulses in ourselves and be the example we want rather than reflecting the pain we hate to ever increasing magnitudes.
Maybe we could avoid writing empty platitudes and try understanding the points we're responding to.
By "we", I mean "you" (just as you did).
I, for one, have already taught my fair share of mathematics classes over my years in academia, and (imagine it!) not even once I felt the impulse to mis-grade a student for any reason — much less so for being exceptionally good.
The very few times I've had the pleasure to teach someone who I felt was better than I was in the subject that I was teaching, I felt genuinely happy to have such luck.
So I'm all set on being the example.
Now, your turn.
Try to understand what I'm saying here before responding (or otherwise emotionally reacting).
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TL;DR: abuse of authority over children warrants revoking the privilege to have such authority.
Simple as.
Meta, but this might be one of the longest comments I have seen in reply to a couple sentences. Lots of condescension, emotions, and holier-than-thou in it, right before asking the person to not react emotionally. Fun stuff.
>Meta
That's one way to say "I'll add nothing of substance to the current conversation, and comment on the perceived tone"
I.e., we're back to reacting emotionally instead of talking about the subject of what to do with teachers who willfully abuse their authority.
To quote a wise person, "Fun stuff".
>longest comment
>emotions
You seem to be confusing the two (and/or are conflating the emotions you are experiencing as a reader with the ones I am experiencing and/or expressing as a writer).
Apropos, as a former instructor, I do enjoy pointing out hypocrisy, inconsistency, and logical fallacies in others' writing - and joy is an emotion, so I'll grant you that. I was channeling that emotion.
Unlike the teacher we are discussing, who's been made angry by the work they were evaluating. See?
>holier-than-thou
That was the biggest¹ issue with the comment I was responding to, which I illustrated. Did you miss that?
Their last sentence was, quote:
>>Maybe we could take the time to understand these impulses in ourselves and be the example we want rather than reflecting the pain we hate to ever increasing magnitudes.
This is holier-than-thou. I was responding to it, in a manner that highlighted the issue.
Since you seem to have missed the holier-than-thou instances in "a couple of sentences" of the parent comment, let me point out a few more:
>>You seem very angry yourself, and willing to let that anger guide you to harming someone.
>>Might there be a more charitable interpretation of the words, might there be information that we don't have that would, say, humanize the human being you'd like to ruin?
>>Are you so different from that teacher? In fact, you might be worse
That's four holier-than-thous per 7 sentences (I counted, correct me if needs be).
The last one takes the cake though: and they went as far as calling the grandparent commenter worse than a someone who willfully wronged a child under their authority — all for saying that such abuse and breach of trust warrants a revocation of such a person's privilege of having authority over children.
So, a personal attack and ad hominem on top of all that holier-than-thou.
Note that I am not resorting to implications of that nature - those that say something about what the person I am responding to is (as opposed to discussing something they say or do).
>right before asking the person to not react emotionally
...and yet you boldly went ahead, and did precisely that, feeling piqued on the behalf of the person I was responding to.
There's a reason I asked that, and thank you for providing an illustration why it was necessary.
May I ask you to go back, and re-read the comment I wrote as textual analysis, and respond on substance, not tone? Thank you.
>Lots of condescension
So, let's be clear. Stuff like this:
>>Might there be a more charitable interpretation of the words, might there be information that we don't have that would, say, humanize the human being you'd like to ruin?
...is an example of condescension because it asserts that the person they were talking to was dehumanizing the teacher, and implies that they'd have a difficulty of "humanizing the human" without some extra help from the parent commentor.
I make no such assumptions or assertions about the person I am responding to, as I am commenting exclusively on text that they wrote.
Note how I always include the text I am responding to, to make it clear that my attitude is towards the thing being said, not the person.
The thing being said, in this case, was a piece of emotional drivel, exceptionally rich in logical fallacies and manipulative techniques.
The entire argument was an appeal to emotion: look at how hurt the teacher would be by being fired, you are a bad person for suggesting that.
(Again, did you happen to miss that? This was another reason I asked not to react emotionally).
I rightfully lampoon such rhetoric, whereas the parent commentor was condescending towards a person.
Compare and contrast.
>holier-than-thou
Oh, and I want to come back to that.
See, I taught mathematics for over a decade (as a tutor, grader, teaching assistant, lab instructor, and instructor of record in a class of 90 people).
I've had the grace of teaching a few students I considered brighter than myself, and I felt very happy to have had such privilege.
And not once in my decade of teaching did I feel the urge to mis-grade someone, or thought of defending someone who did so.
I've had children (and young adults) who've gone through such instructors in my classes. They were traumatized. Some cried in my office hours. Some went red in their faces, saying why didn't they show us this in high school.
So, while I am not "holier" than thou (or the parent commentor), I am absolutely more qualified to comment on whether the person we're discussing deserves to continue teaching than anyone here who hasn't had that experience (specifically - that of teaching people who've been traumatized by other instructors).
Please, I urge you to understand what I wrote above.
I am not ashamed to put my name under this statement:
https://romankogan.net/math/
I am saying this to provide a basis for my statements, to qualify them - not to engage in appendage measuring. My experience is what gives my words weight.
Please don't confuse expertise and experience with condescension; and note that I am expressing none towards you.
For all I know, you might be a professor with decades of teaching experience, far more accomplished than I am in everything.
But nobody - including you - is actually holy, much less "holier". We all make mistakes, and sometimes miss some context, or say something stupid.
And pointing those instances out isn't a sin either.
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¹Biggest issue aside from ascribing emotion to where there's none, that is, which is a common theme in this thread
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